My expectation for this article was very different, maybe because I’m not at all familiar with the author. This seemed like a loose collection of aphorisms and not really like anything I’d lump in with what I generally think of as “journalism”. Take this for example:
Bureaucracy is not merely sluggish. It is a cultural scorn. It rejects the possibility of dialogue. It insists that ignorance, codified into policy, no matter how wrong and inhumane it is, remains the best resistance against social mobility, against moral motion. In such a society, hope is not misplaced. It is extinguished.
What does this mean? What does it refer to? Which bureaucratic processes specifically? This could have been a useful think-piece, but it doesn’t contain any actual information. It’s more… like a word-picture for feelings.
Maybe the ZEIT editors also had different expectations?
Yeah, they’re all reflections and learnings of their own life, nothing “wish I would have known before coming to Germany” that is about Germany explicitly and living there specifically. Many of the views don’t influence anything if you were to come to Germany.
Delayed second comment reply now that I’ve actually read through their texts.
When I reduce the quote, I understand it as “bureaucracy is inhumane, depersonalized processes, evading individual concerns and preventing social mobility (that those worse off can get into a better situation)”.
When I reduce the quote, I understand it as “bureaucracy is inhumane, depersonalized processes, evading individual concerns and preventing social mobility (that those worse off can get into a better situation)”.
I read that as well - but again, that’s a completely disconnected statement, so what’s the point? Ai Weiwei doesn’t elaborate on what kind of bureaucracy he encounted, how that bureaucracy differs from the one he was used to or holds as ideal. There’s nothing actionable here, i.e. that paragraph didn’t teach me anything about German bureaucracy.
My expectation for this article was very different, maybe because I’m not at all familiar with the author. This seemed like a loose collection of aphorisms and not really like anything I’d lump in with what I generally think of as “journalism”. Take this for example:
What does this mean? What does it refer to? Which bureaucratic processes specifically? This could have been a useful think-piece, but it doesn’t contain any actual information. It’s more… like a word-picture for feelings.
Maybe the ZEIT editors also had different expectations?
Yeah, they’re all reflections and learnings of their own life, nothing “wish I would have known before coming to Germany” that is about Germany explicitly and living there specifically. Many of the views don’t influence anything if you were to come to Germany.
Delayed second comment reply now that I’ve actually read through their texts.
When I reduce the quote, I understand it as “bureaucracy is inhumane, depersonalized processes, evading individual concerns and preventing social mobility (that those worse off can get into a better situation)”.
I read that as well - but again, that’s a completely disconnected statement, so what’s the point? Ai Weiwei doesn’t elaborate on what kind of bureaucracy he encounted, how that bureaucracy differs from the one he was used to or holds as ideal. There’s nothing actionable here, i.e. that paragraph didn’t teach me anything about German bureaucracy.